This coming Sunday is the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time. Our gospel is the Parable of the Talents. Warren Carter has a different take on the parable. He views the parable as criticism of “the perspective of the wealthy elite” who punishes “the one who subverts the system:”  He writes “On the basis of Jesus’ teaching in 19:16–22 [the Rich Young Man], the master and the first two servants could rightly be rebuked for their greedy and acquisitive actions. The third servant should be commended for not adding to the master’s wealth by not depriving others!” Similarly, Barbara Reid (CBQ 66) notes: “The third servant is the honorable one because he unmasks the wickedness of the master”—though Reid herself mentions this exegesis only as a “possibility” which she does not in fact adopt. 

Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh (Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels) suggest that there was a “limited good” understanding in the first-century Mediterranean world. This is quite a different perspective than our western, 20th century, capitalistic world, where we operated with a sense that goods are in an “unlimited supply.” They write concerning this parable: “Because the pie was “limited” and already distributed, an increase in the share of one person automatically meant a loss for someone else. Honorable people, therefore, did not try to get more, and those who did were automatically considered thieves. Noblemen avoided such accusations of getting rich at the expense of others by having their affairs handled by slaves. Such behavior could be condoned in slaves, since slaves were without honor anyway.” The third servant buried his master’s money to ensure that it remained intact. This, of course, was the honorable thing for a freeman to do; was it honorable behavior for a servant? They have further thoughts on the “limited good” in an earlier section: “An honorable man would thus be interested only in what was rightfully his and would have no desire to gain anything more, that is, to take what was another’s. Acquisition was, by its very nature, understood as stealing. The ancient Mediterranean attitude was that every rich person is either unjust or the heir of an unjust person (Jerome, In Heiremiam 2.5.2). Profit making and the acquisition of wealth were automatically assumed to be the result of extortion or fraud. The notion of an honest rich man was a first-century oxymoron.”

I primarily offer these voices to again point to the nature of parables.  There is much room for interpretation. Still, one can critique Carter and the others since this is not the only parable which assumes the validity of acquiring wealth and of private ownership. Even in the end of our parable of the talents, the two servants acquire a great deal of wealth in private ownership. Yet there is the question of what one does while being ready.

It is perhaps less about the “what” and more about readiness and responsibility. It is not about natural endowment, though the degree of responsibility given to each depends on their individual ability (v. 15). The “talents,” however, do not represent that individual ability but are allocated on the basis of it. They represent not the natural gifts and aptitudes which everyone has, but the specific privileges and opportunities of the kingdom of heaven and the responsibilities they entail. St. Paul notes this same distinction in “gifts.” The parable thus teaches that each disciple has God-given gifts and opportunities to be of service to the Lord, and that these are not the same for everyone, but it is left to the reader to discern just what those gifts and opportunities are. This is appropriate to the open-ended nature of parables, and different readers may rightly place the emphasis on different aspects of their discipleship. What matters is that, however precisely the “talents” are interpreted, each disciple should live and work in such a boldly enterprising way that the returning master will say “Well done, you good, trustworthy slave.”

Image credit: The Parable of the Talents by Willem de Porter, 17th century, National Gallery of Prague, PD-US

This coming Sunday is the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time. Our gospel is the Parable of the Talents.  It is very easy to conflate the Lukan and Matthean versions of this parable. Below I offer a side by side comparison. Surprisingly, the Lukan version is not a Sunday Gospel, not even in Lectionary Cycle C, so I will touch lightly upon the Lukan gospel as we move through the commentary.

In the Lukan version of the parable, a man entrusts each of three servants with an amount of money – actually there are ten servants, but in the end only three play a part in the last scene. Upon his return, the first two have worked with the capital and greatly increased it. Attention focuses on the third, who has acted with caution not to lose what was entrusted to him and is able to return it whole to the master. It is unclear how this last servant was perceived by the original hearers of the parable. There is good evidence that they would have considered burying the money a responsible act, but not necessarily keeping it stored in a handkerchief. The third servant in the Lukan version would be seen to have acted irresponsibly and is thus merely lucky to still have it at the master’s return. When the Lukan third servant is challenged as to why he has not increased the money entrusted to him, he responds with a characterization of the master as a harsh and unjust man who inspires only fear and caution. 

This perhaps gives the original hearers a bit of a pause. On the one hand, the hearers have just seen proof of the master’s generosity to the first two servants. On the other hand, the story has led them to be sympathetic to the action of the one-talent man in carefully hiding the money. To his (and the hearers’) surprise, the one-talent man is condemned for fearful inactivity, and his money is given to the first servant, who already has ten talents. The hearers must decide which characterization of the master to accept. The parable has led them in both directions, and it creates a dilemma rather than resolving one.

The careful listener should now be asking whether the original grant of money was entrusted to the servants to manage or was it given to them as their own. Perhaps only the third servant continues to regard the money as his master’s. If true, then the whole parable must be understood in terms of grace and the response to it, rather than stewardship of property that remains another’s.

Luke has positioned this parable between the story of Zacchaeus and Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Matthew has positioned the parable (with different details) between his “Little Apocalypse” and a scene of the final judgment. It may well point to a different intention and understanding. But then parables always have such leeway. As mentioned above, “readiness” seems to be the point of Matthew’s use of the parable – but then, we shall see.

Matthew’s Thought. A comparison with other Matthean parables is useful. (1) In 18:23–35, a servant is entrusted with the great wealth of another, and an accounting is called for (only place in the NT this expression is used). The servant is forgiven a fabulous debt incurred by his mismanagement of his master’s money. In our parable, a servant is condemned, although he had lost nothing of his master’s money. (2) In both parables the servant is called “wicked.” (3) But, earlier, the judgment is a matter of actively and profligately abusing his authority, while in the later parable the “wicked” servant is cautiously circumspect. (4) the final judgments in each case are severe: “Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt.” (18:34) – and – “And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” (25:30). It is worth noting that the differences are in what lead to judgment: abuse and profligate waste, as well as, lack of action.

Such contrasts in Matthew’s pictures of the judgment and the ultimate judge serve to guard the reader from too readily objectifying the meanings presented allegorically and to frustrate our efforts to summarize the way God works into neat coherent systems. The pictures point beyond themselves and resist systematization, while still speaking of the reality of judgment and the necessity for decision and responsible action – in other words, “readiness.”

Keep in mind that in our parable, the servants are not surprised at their master’s coming, so “readiness” is more attuned to whether the servants will be dependable in the use of the resources. We should note that the master entrusted his resources to the servants “to each according to his ability” (25:15). The third one received only one talent, likely indicating that the master understands that he has less ability than the others. The master does not overburden the third servant who nonetheless fails – not in any loss of money, but in returning it without increase. It was not that he did something wrong—he simply did nothing. This helps focus the parable, narrowing the focus to maximizing opportunities, not wasting them. To be “ready” for the master’s return means to use the intervening time to “maximum gain”; it is again about continuing life and work rather than about calculating the date and being alert for his actual arrival.

Image credit: The Parable of the Talents by Willem de Porter, 17th century, National Gallery of Prague, PD-US